


if you must fight (fight with yourself and your thoughts in the night)

by floodonthefloor



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Bly Manor, F/F, YES this is a blatant fix it fic, YES this is how im choosing to end bly manor, YES this is the best tv show ive ever watched in a long long time, damie - Freeform, drowning tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27188035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floodonthefloor/pseuds/floodonthefloor
Summary: Jamie goes back to the lake and finds Dani at the bottom. Dani pushes. Jamie pulls. Finally, Viola allows her in.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 14
Kudos: 449





	if you must fight (fight with yourself and your thoughts in the night)

**Author's Note:**

> if you must die, sweetheart,  
> die knowing your life was my life's best part

The first person she calls, soaking wet and shivering, is Owen.

Owen. Hannah. Flora. Miles. Rebecca. Peter Fucking Quint. Henry. Dani. _Dani. Dani. Dani._

Henry Wingrave had given them all keys to the manor, _just in case,_ as if there was a chance in hell that any of them would ever go back, as if they would ever revisit that dark evening, a faceless, ageless lady carrying young Flora into the lake with a terrifying calmness, Henry somewhere between life and death in the soaked grass. Hannah disappearing. Hannah in the well.

As if they would ever.

Owen kept his keys in a lockbox, in the corner of the back of his storage room.

Jamie and Dani kept theirs in the drawer in the stand next to their front door.

_Just in case the Lady decides to do anything funny,_ Dani had said, half-joking, half with that look in her eye that says _I’m scared Jamie, I’m scared all the time._

 _I’ll sort her out if she does,_ Jamie had said, hand on Dani’s back, rubbing circles as Dani shut the drawer door.

Two rings. The distinct sounds of a bustling restaurant, jazz, clinking forks and ringing bells. Normalcy. _Dani. Dani. Dani._

A female voice on the other end.

“Batter Place!”

There’s a flash of _fuck’s sake, that name. Owen, you little bastard,_ going through Jamie’s head immediately overtaken by _Dani. Dani. Dani._

“Owen. Sharma. I need Owen,” she says, inconsiderate of how crass she sounds, barely registering her own chattering teeth.

“Sorry, who’s asking?”

“Bloody hell. Tell him it’s Jamie, it’s urgent, get a move on!” she half-yells, pinching the bridge of her nose, tears threatening to overtake her again. _Not right now. Shut up._

There’s a pointed clearing of a throat, _fuck you, fuck you, you have no idea what’s happening right now, you twat, my wife is dead at the bottom of a lake,_ the sound of the phone being put down on a table.

_One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten…eleven…twelve…thirteen…thirteen years. Thirteen years. Thirteen years has come to this. Dani. Dani. Dani —_

“Jamie? What the hell are you doing, talking to my staff like that —“

“Dani,” Jamie blurts it out as if it’s a cough she’d been trying to conceal for the past 10 hours, since she woke up and found Dani’s note, since she sobbed for 10 minutes before immediately gearing up into action, getting the last of 3 available seats on a flight to Bly. “It’s Dani.”

A pause on Owen’s end. “Jamie, where are you?”

A sob on Jamie’s end. More silence on the other end.

“I’m at — I’m at Bly. It’s Dani. She — the lake —”

“Fuck’s sake. Fuck. That bloody fucking place.” Owen’s voice is strained, quiet. “Er, okay, alright, okay. Breathe. Okay. I — one sec — Kevin!”

A clattering noise on the other end. Jamie cries. She cries, and she cries. Jamie fists her left hand tight so that the ring presses into her skin, indents it, maybe if she hurts enough she’d wake up next to Dani, this is a fever dream —

“Alright, I’m coming. You’re at the manor, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t do anything stupid. I’m catching a flight, it’s leaving in two hours, I’ll be there by the evening —“

“I can’t — I can’t touch her,” Jamie says, and her voice is coming out as a weak sob again. _Dani. Dani._

_I’m so tired, Jamie,_ running through her head. A flooded bathroom floor. Wet hair. The civil union documents sitting right next to their door, on top of the god damn keys to Bly Manor. _Maybe I should just accept that._

_I only see you._

“What? Jamie, what do you mean?”

“I tried — I tried going back in to get her — her —“ - a sob - “Her body, but it’s like there’s a current pushing from it, like she’s keeping me away.”

_We lay my love and I beneath the weeping willow_

“She? Dani is?”

_But now alone I lie and weep beside the tree_

“I don’t fucking know!” Jamie’s already halfway decided to go back into the lake, nevermind the fact that it’s getting dark, nevermind the fact that decomposing bodies have been in there, pulled in by whatever fucking _gravity well_ the stories say surrounded Bly Manor, resting finally, for years, centuries.

_Singing 'Oh willow waly' by the tree that weeps with me_

Owen sighs. Another pause. “Don’t go back in there, you don’t know what’s going to happen, stay inside, I’ll be there soon.”

_’Til my lover return to me_

Of course, Jamie goes back.

-

_Jamie falls asleep in the passenger seat as Dani drives. She dreams. As with everything, it’s a recurrent dream. A nightmare. She’s never sure. A current too strong to keep a sand-held foothold over. In her dream she feels excited. There’s something exciting about it. Something about being swept into a deadly nearby ocean. Experiencing something bottomless._

_Dani’s always there, holding her hand. She’s always there beside her. Mikey waves goodbye to them from the shore. Her father stands solemnly next to him._

_“Baby.” Dani’s voice breaks through her dreams. “We’re home.”_

_-_

_Home._ Jamie thinks of home as she wades back into that god-awful cold fucking lake. _Home._ Dani getting cross with her for trailing dirt into the apartment _again._ Even when she was cross, Dani would be apologetic. Like it was her own fault that Jamie has left soil from the downstairs ferns scattered by their shoes. Jamie would sweep it up and then sweep Dani into her arms, sweet Dani. Sweet, gentle Dani.

_Here’s the thing —_

Dani coming home on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, demure as she is, dying plant in hands as Jamie somehow manages to fuck up canned spaghetti sauce.

_You’re my best friend and the love of my life_

Dani with her hand rubbing circles on Jamie’s stomach when she comes down with a nasty case of the flu.

_And I don’t know how much time we have left_

Dani underneath her, sweat-slicked skin, whimpering curse words and affirmations in her ear.

_But however much it is, I wanna spend it with you_

Jamie dives back in. It’s darker, now. Dani lies in the murky growth underneath the lake. Eyes open. Jamie resists the urge to scream again at the sight.

_Please, Dani. Please. Please don’t leave. Don’t leave me. Us. You. Please._

Dani, the one who broke her open before Jamie even knew she was trying to, the one Jamie _swore_ she wouldn’t get involved with, the one who broke her resolve down in record time, the one who can’t make tea for shite, even a decade later, the one who loves her people more than her own life.

Push, push, push. Jamie swims against the current. She feels her lungs tighten, _she needs to go back up for air,_ but she feels closer than she ever has before to getting to Dani.

_Dani. Dani. Dani._

Push, push, _push._

And suddenly,

a pull.

Suddenly,

Jamie is floating.

Suddenly,

Jamie is pulled down.

-

_Dennis called one day._

_Dennis never called._

_He called to say that he’d driven past their old house and saw that they’d cut down Jamie’s reading tree. Jamie’s reading tree. Jamie had gone outside to read against the trunk of that old tree once, when she was seven. It wasn’t Jamie’s reading tree. It was a tree Jamie had read once at._

_Dennis was closer to the real earth than she’d ever been. When Louise left, Jamie thinks that he killed whatever God he believed in. He mined and tilled at the rocks and dirt at the bottom of the grave that he’d dug for himself._

_Jamie is sitting in her bed in one of the foster homes, a disgusting man named Leo screaming at his wife for forgetting to buy his favorite beers, wondering why she was the one who couldn’t seem to be forgiven when it was Louise who dug into Dennis’ brain for years, and what she planted there still grows._

_“Right then. That’s too bad,” she’d said._

_Silence on the other end._

_Silence on her end._

_“Yeah. Well. Take care, Jamie.”_

_-_

Jamie wakes up and she’s standing by the lake. She looks down at herself, then back up. She’s bone dry.

“What the fuck —“

“Jamie.”

 _That voice._ She whirls around. Dani stands there, in that spaghetti strap silk dress, tears running down her face. “You weren’t supposed to come back. Why did you come back?”

“Dani,” Jamie breathes, so quiet that it feels as though if she says it any louder, Dani will disappear. She charges forward, wrapping her arms around her. There’s a pause, and Dani’s arms are holding her back, _tight tight tight_. Jamie’s legs feel weak. They don’t feel real. This doesn’t feel real.

“Is this real?” she asks, not wanting to pull away for fear of Dani disappearing, inhaling the scent of her.

Dani lets out a sob. “Why did you come back?”

At this, Jamie pulls away, brushing Dani’s hair away from her eyes. “Unbelievable that you thought I wouldn’t.”

“I told you not to.”

“Poppins,” Jamie whispers, “You’ve never been one for authority when it comes to adults.” She looks around, back at the lake, back to Dani. Repeats herself. “Is this real?”

Dani shakes her head. “I don’t know - I don’t know what’s happening —“

A voice from behind.

“Curious little things.”

They both turn. A dark-haired woman in a white dress that Jamie instantly recognizes as one of the women in the two portraits at the top of the stairs. Jamie is cognizant of Dani’s hand squeezing hers. She squeezes back.

“Viola,” Dani breathes.

“Am I?” The woman looks up at seemingly nothing but the sky, then back at the two girls. “I suppose I am. I forgot the sound of my own name.” She looks down at her hands. "The features of my own skin."

Dani and Jamie merely stand there, waiting, holding each others’ hands. Jamie’s heart is —

Jamie doesn’t feel her heart beating.

“Gravity, water,” Viola continues musing, looking down at herself, running her hand through the fabric of her dress, also bone dry. “A well. A dress, a door, a chest, a little girl, home.”

She steps closer to them. They both step back.

“Sleep, wake, walk.”

She steps closer. They step back.

“Obsession. Possession. Love. _Love._ When do the two separate? Were they ever together? Two ends of a string?" Viola looks up. "Or were they torn apart from the beginning?”

“Back off there, mate,” Jamie says harshly as Viola takes another step towards them. Viola tilts her head, gives them a curious little crooked smile.

“My name is Viola Lloyd.” Viola looks around at her surroundings. “Why am I still here?”

“You —“ Dani is speaking at Jamie’s side. Jamie tears up at the sound of her voice. _This has to be real. This has to be real._ “You wanted to be. You needed to be. Your child. You — you wanted her back, you wanted her with you.”

“And why is she not with me?” Viola tilts her head the other way.

“Because she left after you died.” Dani’s voice wavers. “

“And why is she not with me?”

It seems as though Dani hadn’t sufficiently answered Viola’s question. Jamie grits her teeth. This _fucking_ place. This godforsaken place. The number of times she’d tried to make sense of it all, Flora and Miles, how the house felt like it was breathing at times.

“Because you didn’t — you don't own her,” Dani says, her voice no longer wavering. “You never did. You loved her, but you — you mixed it up with ownership. She was your child, but not yours. Not yours to keep forever. We’ve talked about this.”

 _We’ve talked about this?_ Jamie looks at Dani, then back at Viola.

“Is this one yours?” Viola says, looking directly at Jamie. Jamie clenches her free fist.

“No,” Dani whispers. “No. I love her, but she’s not mine.”

Jamie swallows a lump in her throat.

“Then why did you pull her down?”

“I didn’t. You did,” Dani says, letting go of Jamie’s hand and starting forward with that quick, jerky gait of hers. That urgent walk that Jamie loves.

Jamie follows, trying to grab Dani’s hand again, but she’s already face-to-face with Viola. “You did. I begged you not to let her come down to where we were. But you did.”

“Bring a cloth close enough to a droplet of water, and the water has no choice but to soak itself within it.” Viola steps closer to Dani, and at this point, Jamie steps forward.

“Enough with this rambling nonsense,” she says, realization settling in the pit of her stomach like rocks at the bottom of a pool. “Have you killed us both? You have, haven't you?”

“Why is my daughter not with me?”

“She’s dead,” Dani says, her voice rising. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for centuries. You’ve been dead for centuries, but you just won’t fucking _leave._ ”

Another tilt of the head. Jamie considers jolting her fist forward into Viola’s face.

_What’s she going to do if she does, kill her?_

“It’s all different, isn’t it?” Viola says. “What it means to be human. I’d forgotten, until you let me in. The feeling of my own flesh. Human flesh. Thoughts in my head.”

“Please let her go,” Dani says, gesturing to Jamie. “We can keep — we can keep waiting down in the lake, but please. You can’t take her, too.”

“Dani —“ Jamie’s eyes fill with tears again. She can’t lose her. Not again. _Not again._

“Why should we wait in the lake?” Viola says.

Dani shakes her head, stammers. “I —“

“What will I wait for?”

“ _Please,”_ Dani sobs, “Jamie didn’t mean to come in to get me, please —“

“Yes, I did!” Jamie cuts in. Viola looks at her again.

“I think I’ll rest,” Viola murmurs, looking out at the lake. “I’ll rest. And be with my little one again. My little girl.”

“You — you can do that,” Dani says, “We can rest. We can rest. Just let Jamie go. Please. Let her go.”

“Stop saying ‘we’,” Jamie says, tugging Dani back. Dani turns to look at her, watery blue eyes meeting green. “I can’t do this without you. I can’t live without you.”

_Dani. Dani. Dani._

“Yes, you can,” Dani whispers, touching her forehead to Jamie’s. “You lived for so long without me. You did so much. You can keep doing it.”

“You would let her live without you?” Viola says from behind them. “You would carry on without her?”

Dani whirls around. “I won’t throw away her life in the name of fear of being alone. I won’t.”

“Curious,” Viola says again.

Jamie starts to hear a ringing in her ears. Like a rush of blood. A rush of water as though she’s just jumped into a pool. She looks at Dani, who looks back at her, panicked look in her eyes. She hears it too.

“Dani —“

-

_Jamie is ten and there are helicopters in the lower half of the sky hovering near a man named Wilson’s house like seagulls hungry for something, except of course they’re only here to help. Maybe Jamie has been misinterpreting seagulls her whole life._

_The helicopters, anyway, are probably too late. There are four cop cars parked jaggedly along the side yard as if for the saddest graduation party ever. Jamie doesn’t know this yet, but Wilson was in the backyard and got crushed under a barrage of falling boulders. He had brain cancer, but a bunch of rocks ended up cutting his life even shorter._

_People have thrown their bikes off to the side and they’re coming out onto the road like deer and leering at the house. Jamie’s sure they think they’re just looking, but it feels like leering. She didn’t even really know Wilson very well. She just wanted to get close enough to death that she could almost touch it._

_Just to feel lucky that she hadn’t experienced it._

-

The first thing Jamie registers is the cold. She is so, so cold.

The second thing is that she’s floating.

The third is that she’s underwater.

She’s lightheaded as she flails in the water, feeling weighed down by her own clothes, and she chokes in gulp after gulp of water.

Her ears are ringing. The water is murky and dark.

A black curtain falls over her eyes.

-

She wakes with a start and Owen is kneeling above her, his hands on her chest, pushing down. Her ribs feel bruised.

“Fuck! Thank god — fuck,” he says, brushing his hair back and caressing Jamie’s cheek. “Alright, you’re alright, it’s okay —“

“Dani,” she chokes.

“She’s inside,” Owen says, “She’s unconscious, but I —“

“What?” Jamie jolts up into a sitting position, blood rushing to her head. She sways slightly. Owen supports her, hand on her back.

“Slow down.”

“Shut up,” Jamie says, coughing. “What do you mean, she’s inside?”

“Alright, you could be nicer to the man who just saved your life,” Owen chides. “I got here with Henry, and you and Dani were lying next to the lake. Henry did CPR on Dani, he carried her in, doctors are on their way. She seems alright, you must have pulled her out of the lake in time —”

Jamie is up and stumbling towards the manor before Owen can even finish his sentence.

“Slow down, there,” Owen says, stretching his arm out to support Jamie, “She’s not going to disappear if you take your time.”

“We don’t bloody well know that, do we?” Jamie says, leaning against Owen.

They make their way into the manor in silence, neither of them wanting to acknowledge the way it feels to be back inside, not yet. Up the stairs, Owen more or less carrying all of Jamie’s weight. Into the bedroom, where Henry sits at the bed Dani lies in, looking as though she’s merely been sleeping this entire time.

Jamie starts forward, onto the bed, hands on either side of Dani’s beautiful, perfect face. “Dani,” she whispers. “Oh, my god.”

“She’s alright, she came to a few moments ago, but fell back unconscious,” Henry murmurs. “Are you feeling alright?”

She looks up at Henry Wingrave. He’s aged, lines across his face, but still he looks younger and lighter than he did all those years ago when he arrived at the manor that fateful night.

“Alright,” she says, nodding. Henry rises.

“Doctors will be here soon to check you both out, make sure there isn’t any long-term damage.” He looks up at Owen, then back at Jamie. “Do you want a moment?”

Jamie just nods, not taking her eyes off Dani’s face. Dani. The love of her life. Almost lost. Never again.

“Holler if you need us,” Owen says, and the two men are out the door, closing it shut behind them.

Jamie traces her fingers along Dani’s cheekbones. Her jawline.

“Poppins,” she whispers, tears flooding her eyes. This doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. Is this real? If it’s not real, if this is a dream, Jamie begs herself to not wake up. “Poppins, wake up.”

Dani twitches slightly at the touch. Her eyes flutter open.

“Dani,” Jamie breathes. Dani’s eyes widen, and she struggles into a sitting position. Jamie holds her much like Owen did not ten minutes ago.

“You —“ Dani looks around the familiar room. “Oh my god. Oh my god, you came back. We’ve died.” Dani’s eyes fill with tears. “I told you not to come back, I told you not to come back for me in my note —“

“Shh, shh,” Jamie says, brushing damp hair out of Dani’s face. “I don’t think we’ve died. I don’t know what happened, but I think we’re both here. Alive.”

Dani looks at Jamie, tears cascading down her face. “But I went into the lake. I —“

“You did,” Jamie says, letting out a watery chuckle, “Like a right idiot, you did, but —“

She remembers the conversation with Viola. How she’d been dry beside the lake. The way Dani had spoken to her as if she was reminding Viola of conversations they’d had in the past.

“I think Viola let go,” she whispers, touching her forehead to Dani’s like they always do, feeling her heart beat, _feeling her heart beat,_ feeling Dani’s skin against hers. “I think she let go. I think you taught her how to let go. I think you —“

Then Dani’s lips are on hers, kissing her fully, hard, like they’re going to run out of time. Jamie pulls back at the thought of it.

“Do you still feel her?”

There’s a pause, and Dani closes her eyes. She opens them again and shakes her head, a smile breaking out on her face. She kisses Jamie again. And then again.

“I only feel you.”


End file.
